- April 24, 2024
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A Palm Coast woman was arrested last week on money laundering charges totaling more than $300,000.
Devin Kolb was arrested on a warrant Nov. 14 and is being held at the Flagler County Inmate Facility, according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.
Kolb runs Vale Professionals, a Palm Coast-based timeshare liquidation service, with her husband. For a fee, the company takes ownership of timeshares and, its website says, liquidates them using a “professional closing company that specializes in timeshare transfers.”
The company reported an 800% spike in its revenue from January to May 2011.
Kolb’s charges are related to her involvement with Anthony Fregenti, who was arrested in September 2010 on a warrant charging him with running an organized scheme to defraud.
Fregenti’s scheme centers on Dark Hawk Enterprises LLC, a fictitious entity. When he was arrested in 2010, Fregenti was charged with involvement in a scheme in which vehicles or motorcycles were to be purchased and sold overseas to a Saudi Arabian prince.
Investors gave Fregenti money to buy the cars with a promise of a return on the investments once the vehicle was sold, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Fregenti and others would run money through Dark Hawk Enterprises and put it to personal use.
Another Palm Coast man, Michael Stevens, was arrested in October for involvement with Dark Hawk Enterprises.
Kolb’s charges also stem from financial transactions she made with the company, according to a probable cause affidavit.
In a sworn statement Kolb gave Dec. 9, 2010, she said she and Marvin Mullins, her husband and business partner at Vale Professionals, met Fregenti through a mutual friend. Fregenti pitched them a business plan involving managing a time share liquidation company.
Kolb, Mullins and Fregenti opened KCF International LLC International Timeshare Liquidators together. The company’s name stands for “keep cash flowing,” Kolb said. At the same time, Kolb said she also opened ITL Marketing LLC.
ITL was opened as a listing company through which consumers paid to list their timeshares for sale or rent. The business used independent contractors to solicit timeshare owners, she said.
Kolb said Fregenti would give her checks and ask her to deposit them and obtain money orders for him the following day, which she did.
She testified about another instance when Fregenti asked her to write two checks from ITL Marketing’s account — one for $579,000 and one for $400,000 — for Todd Mitchell and Dale LNU, and then to deposit the checks into their respective bank accounts.
Kolb said she obliged, even though she knew there wasn’t enough money in ITL Marketing’s account to cover the checks. She said she didn’t know why she did it, but she didn’t ask questions.
The probable cause affidavit cites bank records that show financial interplay between ITL Marketing and Dark Hawk Enterprises.
Records show a check written against ITL Marketing’s account for $250,000, made payable to Dark Hawk and signed by Kolb, was deposited into Dark Hawk Enterprises’ bank account Sept. 15, 2009.
On Sept. 16, 2009, a check for $250,000 was written against Dark Hawk Enterprises’ bank account. It was made payable to ITL Marketing and signed by Fregenti.
A deposit item return withdrawal of $250,000 was recorded against the Dark Hawk Enterprises' bank account two days later. That same day, a counter deposit was recorded with a check from ITL Marketing’s bank, written for $250,000 and made payable for Dark Hawk Enterprises.
The probable cause affidavit lists another nearly identical instance from October 2009, which involved checks written for $467,213.
It also shows that Kolb wrote a check against the ITL Marketing account for $345,000 in January 2010. It was made payable to Dark Hawk Enterprises, but was notated “Vale,” according to the affidavit.
The investigation is still under way.
Email Megan Hoye at [email protected].
